hey, medusa!!! i’m wanting to run an exchange, but i’ve never done so before. do you have a guide or some tips?
Okay. Oh boy. I do not have a formal guide. What I know off the top of my head (this is a bit fragmented cause I've been at a wedding all weekend) is this.
If you are running an exchange, it is orders of magnitude easier to do it on Ao3 rather than using a google form and hand-matching. This is for two reasons. One is the aforementioned hand-matching— it's more complicated to get people to sign up on Ao3, but you can make guides for it, and matching through Ao3 is a like 90 minute process including checking for people who've made Do Not Match requests, and hand-matching if you have more than like 9 people is a multi-day process. I think it took me four day to match the holiday exchange last time, and I had an insane spreadsheet about it. The other aspect is communication— through Ao3 you just press a button and everyone gets their assignment emailed to them. If you're using a google form, you have to fall back on either having a discord you get everyone to join (which you then have to moderate, and then send individual messages) or using tumblr messaging (and if you send more than 50 messages to people a day it caps you, and if you do that three days running, you get shadow banned).
It is vitally important that you allow a space for people to put down their Do Not Wants, to avoid people getting fics or art they hate or are actively triggered by. But it really helps if you can emphasize that your Do Not Want needs to be neutral and polite, cause who knows who is gonna get your request, cause otherwise you do have people signing up with things like "no dark fic or creepy stuff" and not only is that rude to people who like dark fic, that's REALLY hard to moderate— what's "creepy stuff"? Who decides?
If you are having an exchange that's over a month long, it's really helpful to have a check-in to make sure everybody is still working on the gift and to remind people that the deadline is coming. You'll always get defaults around check-in time as people go OH SHIT.
Expect that about 20% of your exchange will either default (communicating this with you) or just no-show at the deadline. Do not assume that someone who missed a deadline is going to get it in soon, you need to follow up with them IMMEDIATELY and start saying things like "if I haven't heard from you in 8 hours I'm going to assume you've defaulted and send this to pinch hits", or things will stretch on for WEEKS. You'll need pinch hitters for these people who didn't get their gift done— and like, this isn't a thing to be mad at— people get sick, computers blow up, people leave the fandom, internet goes out, life happens— and you'll need a plan in place to get assignments to the pinch hitters, and a timeline for them to get their gift done. I've had people noshow because they left the fandom and they didn't think to tell anyone, and I've had people noshow because they were in intensive care. You get the whole spectrum. Remember that when you're communicating with someone, you COULD be talking to the intensive care person, so be direct and actionable (I need to hear from you within x timeframe or I'm gonna assume you're unable to get your gift done) but still be polite. With a 1k assignment minimum, most pinch-hitters can get a gift done in a week or less.
Spend some time thinking about your content rules and how you'll enforce them. The point of moderation is not to provide a value judgement for anything, no matter your personal opinions, you're there to be an impartial enforcer of the rules— rules that were clear enough to start with that everyone had a reasonable understanding of them when they entered the space, so that they could make an informed decision about the space and if they would be comfortable there. So a rule like "no e-rated fics" is fine and enforceable, and if you have an exchange with minors that's a reasonable idea, but a rule like "no dark content" becomes very hard to enforce, because who's defining that? Does dark humour count? How dark can angst-with-a-happy-ending get before it counts? If there's torture in your source material, can it be used in work? Major Character Death? And so on. You need to look at your rules and go "how would someone who doesn't know me interpret that" if at all possible, and try and think of worst case scenarios, and try and make things clear and understandable and enforceable.
Within MCYT spaces, if you're doing anything multifandom/anything that goes outside of your circle of friends, I'd really recommend not trying to enforce streamer boundaries, because every different social circle has a different understanding of what those boundaries are. Trying to make a set of rules that includes both hermitfandom and lifesteal fandom and dsmp fandom, while including boundaries, is a screaming nightmare. Plus you start having to run down clips for things instead of actually running your exchange, and it is flat out impossible to find recent and fully informed clips that can't be misinterpreted, for a startling variety of streamers who you'd think (from your social circle) was settled known fact where we had a powerpoint presentation from the streamer. In my opinion running an exchange as Don't Like: Don't Read, maybe with major content warning rules (enforcable and clear!), and then making sure to match carefully is the only way forward.
As a mod, you become basically a non-judgemental customer service guy for a month. You are non-partisan. I've had this happen, and it is REALLY demoralizing to have a mod go "lol that's weird" or "this segment of the fandom is kind of funny" or "we don't want any of those guys" in a space that's theoretically supposed to be welcoming, so if you have said things like "everyone is welome" you have to mean it. There is nothing someone can bring you that makes you go "that's weird" for the duration of the exchange, even if you personally are absolutely not vibing with a person's ships or prompts or aus, or their reason for not getting their fic done seems flimsy, or whatever else. Your entire job is to be non-judgemental supportive helpful rules person, and that's it. You will answer questions already answered in the FAQ a lot.
That's all I can think of, if you have futher questions ask away. :D
